Movie Update

Well, I only watched 11 horror movies this year, but I had fun.

Happy Halloween everyone!

The Last Exorcism

The next person to tell me that I didn't like a movie's ending because I didn't understand it, and then proceeds to EXPLAIN it to me, is going to get my foot up his or her ass. Let's just get that out of the way right now.

I was with this movie right up until the end. I'm one of those people who sits there in a movie and comes up with endings in my head to pass the time, and sometimes I think my endings are better than the real ending once it happens. I think that happened this time. I still think the quiet little ending that I had planned in my head would have been better than the one I saw onscreen, but now that I've let it sit for awhile I am happier with the ending the way it appeared, and I'd like to say a few things.

1. I did not dislike the ending because it wasn't happy. I came into the movie not expecting it to end with rainbows and puppies and kittens, and indeed, if it HAD a happy ending, I would have felt it was a cop-out.

2. I do not need your little 18 year old self to EXPLAIN the particulars of the ending to me. I grew up in the 80s, with satanic panic and ritual abuse reports all over the media, and the McMartin trial, and if you don't kn ow what any of these things are, that's because I know more than you, not the other way around. I UNDERSTOOD what was happening in the ending perfectly well, I just don't think it was as powerful as the ending I had in my head. Yeah, I get it, and I'm ok with it now, but I was let down because I still think my ending would have been better. It's not the movie's fault, though, and I need to evaluate the movie for what it is, not piss all over it because of what it ISN'T. On those terms, it was a good little movie.

3. I most certainly do NOT think the ending is as cut and dried as some people are making it out to be. I think there are several different interpretations and ideas you can come up with from what we're shown onscreen and most of those interpretations could be perfectly valid. Whenever anyone makes a post declaring THIS IS WHAT THE ENDING MEANT AND ALL OTHER IDEAS ARE TOTALLY FALSE AND STUFF, that person just comes across looking like a pompous assdrip.

Spike

OMG this is the worst movie ever made. Seriously. No one in this movie can act, not even a little, and nothing that happens makes any kind of sense, and we have no idea who these characters are, and we hate them all for being so stupid from the very beginning so we don't care what happens to them, and then just when you think the movie couldn't get any stupider, it gets worse and it tries to have pretensions to a PLOT and a DEEPER MEANING and you just want to stab the director in the face and then vomit into the open knife wounds. Seriously. Skip this.

The Haunting of Sarah Hardy (April 19, 2010)

This review has been a long time in coming. Years, in fact. See, around 1992, my brother and I started seeing a movie called "The Haunting of Sarah Hardy" advertised on the cable network TBS, and we of course (being morbid little brats) wanted to see it, but our mom didn't like us watching horror movies. One afternoon, when the movie was being re-run, we convinced our mom to let us watch it, though. Since it's more of a romance/thriller, my brother wasn't fond of it, and my mom liked it for the most part but she HATED the ending, so I was the only one in the family who really enjoyed it.

Years passed, and eventually all I could remember about the movie was a few sparse scenes and the ending. I couldn't even remember the title, and I wanted to watch it again, but I couldn't seem to track it down, so I recruited the help of a few friends of mine (including fellow movie lover Ed Tellier) and together we managed to track it down and figure out that it was this movie. I got a nice friend to transfer her ratty old VHS onto a DVD and I finally got to see the movie last night. So was it worth the wait?

I was a little hesitant at first, because the kids in the prologue of this movie are some of the worst actors I've ever seen, and I worried that the movie would be terrible, but my fears were unfounded. Once the story got going, it was just as good as I'd remembered. Poor Sarah had to watch her delusional mother commit suicide, and she grew up living with the fear that one day she'd inherit her mother's mental illness and suffer the same fate. When we meet the adult Sarah, she's just gotten married to Austin, the man of her dreams, and she's moving back into her family homestead, The Pines, which is beautiful, but also the creepiest fucking house I've ever seen. It's even creepier than the Amityville house.

Of course, as soon as Sarah moves back into The Pines, she starts seeing things. Ghostly images outside, broken glass on the mantle that mysteriously disappears, and she starts getting threatening phone calls and hearing her mother's crazed piano playing. Is Sarah indeed going crazy, or is her mother, whose body was never found, finally coming back after fifteen years to get revenge?

I have to say, even though it was predictable to my older self, I still enjoyed the mystery here. I think even if I hadn't remembered the ending I would have known what was going on (I've seen too many movies where this happens) but it's still fun to watch. Even though the kids in the prologue are terrible actors, I still liked how the adults chosen to play the kids all grown up actually look like their childhood counterparts, and no matter what my mom said about Sarah being weak, I still thought the movie worked better because she was kind and virtuous and didn't have a mean bone in her body. Yeah, I would have loved to see her kick some ass and get some payback, but I don't think it would have fit with her character, and I think Sela Ward (one of my favorite actresses) manages to make Sarah vulnerable without seeming too fragile (after all, if you thought you were going crazy because of some kind of family curse, you'd be pretty "fragile" too, I don't care what my mom says).

This movie isn't for everyone, but I definitely think it deserves more praise than it gets. It taps into a sweeping romantic/thriller tradition of creepy Gothic mansions and family secrets that makes for a fun two hours, and I'll certainly be watching this again (with my huge collection of DVDs, choosing to watch anything more than once is a huge compliment).

Wind Chill (movie #102)

I saw this movie a few years ago for the first of these Halloween challenges that I did,and it's one of the few that I remember from that challenge. It's so bleak and mean-spirited that it's hard to forget. First of all, the characters aren't the most likable in the world. Two college students who don't know each other very well decide to carpool home to save money. The guy secretly likes the girl but she doesn't like him (she doesn't like much of anything, as she botches and complains throughout much of the movie, treating him like shit). On the way home, they get into an accident on a deserted stretch of road, and soon they're trapped in a snowbank without much hope of rescue. To top it off, they start seeing people around them who turn out to be apparitions of spirits of other people who died on that stretch of road. Soon they're fighting frostbite and trying to survive while also battling ghostly visitors from the past.

It's a pretty good little movie. the atmosphere is so thick that it actually has me shivering because it looks so COLD onscreen, the ghosts are pretty cool looking,and there's even a mystery to solve that had me intrigued. I really enjoyed watching this movie again and it's one indie that I can safely recommend since most of the pitfalls of indie filmmaking aren't in evidence here (bad acting,horrible special effects, etc.)

Diary of the Dead (movie #101)

When I was a kid, my brother and I weren't allowed to watch horror movies, but my mom thought that if a movie was black and white that it couldn't do us much harm,so she let us watch the original "Night of the Living Dead" from 1968. I was excited to watch that movie at first, even though I thought an old black and white movie couldn't affect me very much, but let me tell you...that movie messed me up. I was young, and I still expected my movies to end with the good guys triumphing over the bad guys, so the kind of downbeat ending that the original NOTLD movie has was something I didn't expect,but I never forgot how that ending made me feel.

This movie is George Romero's latest "Dead" movie, a continuation of his zombie epic that he began over 30 years ago,and to me, this movie had almost as much of an impact on me that the original did back then. A lot of people don't like ":Diary of the Dead," and I get why. It's cheesy at times and a little silly with some bad acting, but that doesn't bother me too much. the movie follows people of my generation, disillusioned college students who live their lives on the internet and get a lot of their news from YouTube. When the world starts to end, news spreads fast, and an amateur film crew of students at a local college decide to drive around the countryside documenting the events to make a film for whoever is left behind.

A lot of the movie is shaky cam footage, and the people in the movie fight amongst each other the way most people do in zombie movies. A lot of that is captured on the film ans the gravity of the situation reaches them and they realize that the world is changing and things will never be the same for them. It's pretty bleak watching people die and watching the film crew slowly lose hope. the movie ends with a scene that I'll never forget (just as the original NOTLD did) asking me "Are we worth saving?" Since I ask the same question myself a lot, so I appreciated this movie even more because of that. This movie isn't perfect, but it really gets under my skin, and I appreciate it for that. In that way, it hearkens back to the power of the original NOTLD and it was the perfect thing for me to watch for my wrap up of the challenge this year.

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 (movie #100)

Wow, this was a mean-spirited little movie. Not that that's a bad thing. Horror movies are supposed to be disturbing and evil,right? I don't know how the abysmal slasher cash-in "Prom Night" inspired this nasty follow up, but I'm glad it did. this movie follows the story of Mary Lou, a bitchy, rebellious teenager in the 50s who terrorizes a local priest in the opening scene of the film. Mary Lou likes to terrorize people, namely her fellow students at school, and she moves from one guy to another, dumping her boyfriend on prom night to hook up with someone hotter. When a prank goes wrong, Mary Lou is burned to death in front of the rest of the students at prom (like a witch being burned at the stake, which wasn't lost on this viewer). Fast forward to the late 80s, and that school is gearing up for prom again when Mary Lou decides to return from the grave for revenge. She possesses the body of a sweet, innocent girl and pretty much turns her into the embodiment of pure evil (what a bitch).

this movie is really mean-spirited. Mary Lou likes to do horrible things to people, and in one scene, she walks around a locker room, totally nude, terrorizing a fellow student. this scene surprised me. I hear a lot of bitching that movies these days are mean-spirited and they don't offer much hope for the redemption of the characters, but it's clear from watching this movie that this attitude is nothing new. I've never seen this movie before (I didn't like the original Prom Night, so I wasn't interested in seeing the follow up) but I'm really glad I checked it out for the challenge this year. to me, this is what the challenge is all about: discovering cool little horror movies you wouldn't have otherwise seen.

Skeleton Dance (Wildcard #6) (movie # 99)

When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite cartoon shorts. They played it every fall around Halloween during the Saturday morning cartoons my brother and I watched. It takes place in a graveyard where a bunch of animals are spooked by the atmosphere. An owl is sitting in a tree hooting at the audience,being blown about by the wind. Two cats are hissing at each other (much the way my cat hisses at her own reflection in the window) until a skeleton climbs out of a grave and scares them literally out of their skin. Then some other skeletons join the first one, and they begin dancing around,enjoying the music,until the song end is and they climb back in their graves. I haven't seen this cartoon in years, but I'm glad I looked it up for this challenge (and I'm glad I saved all my wildcards but one for the last day, so I could catch up on fun little movies like this on Halloween).

The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) (Wildcard #5) (movie #98)

Having recently watched a newer update on the classic Edgar Allen Poe tale "The Fall of the House of Usher," it was intriguing to go back and watch this, one of the earliest silent films based on this story. Let me tell you, if I thought that movie was trippy and weird (and I did) it has NOTHING on this little silent movie. the dreamlike/nightmarish imagery in this movie is crazy, and it's hard to tell the dream world from reality (which I suspect was the point). This silent movie follows the original story a little more closely than the recent update I watched a few weeks ago (a man goes to the ancestral home of his friend whose sister has recently died of a mysterious disease, only to discover that something more sinister might be going on and she might not be dead) but the nightmarish imagery makes it hard to tell what is going on. I remember reading the Poe story and not being sure what was going on either, though, so I think this is just a theme of this story. Nevertheless, I'm glad I watched this, because it gave me a better appreciation for the "House of Usher" update of the story.

The Devil in a Convent (Wildcard #4) (movie #97)

his is another short movie that's over 100 years old. It's from the year 1899,and it depicts a convent full of nuns that are suddenly terrorized by a demonic little guy (perhaps it's Satan himself; that part isn't totally clear) who appears out of a portal to hell (represented by a trapdoor in the floor) and begins filling the convent with demonic images until he's banished by a Priest. The quality of the primitive special effects is impressive, considering the year this movie was made. It's short, so there's not much of a plot (but then again, some movies today that are hours long don't really have a plot either) but it was still cool to see the early special effects at work trying to tell a creepy little story.

The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (Wildcard # 3) (movie #96)

This is a horror short from the 1890s, and a lot of people call this "the first horror movie." It's only a few seconds long, but it's done in the style of a newsreel, and it depicts the execution of Mary Stuart. The clip shows her kneeling before the executioner, who raises his blade and chops her head off, grabbing it and holding it over his head triumphantly. In the olden days, people used to gather to watch public executions, cheering and jeering when criminals "got what they deserved" (and people say society today is violent). This was a ghoulish practice, but by the 1890s,it was history, so I can't imagine the uproar this movie caused when people saw what appeared to be a woman getting her head chopped off onscreen. By this point I'm sure everyone knew the story of Mary Stuart's execution and knew it was long in the pasty, but if this was the first murder ever captured on film, I wonder how many people believed the image was true? I wonder if people reacted to these images the way they did to a movie like "The Exorcist," running from theaters in terror? It's cool to witness a part of history like this (and to see an onscreen decapitation that's over 100 year sold that's still better than most movie decapitations today).

El Spectoro Rojo (The Red Spectre) (Wildcard #2) (movie #95)

I'm trying to cram in some short movies to fulfill my wildcards for this horror challenge (any movies under the standard running time of about 60 minutes, Halloween specials, etc.) and I wanted to check this movie out, because it was made in 1907 and I like catching up on early horror films and getting a sense of their impact on horror film evolution throughout the years. I've seen a lot of cool little old horror flicks this way, but this movie isn't one of them. It's only about ten minutes long, but it's not very interesting. Some of the movies I watched today were intriguing,but this one just kind of lay there not doing anything interesting. It's about a secluded cave wherein a glowing red ghost lives, performing tricks like a magician, tormenting people. That makes it sound more interesting than it is. I really recommend checking out some of the early silent horror films, but you can safely skip this one.

Shaun of the Dead (movie #94)

This is one of my favorite comedies of all time. I still remember the first time I saw it. My friend and I got off third shift at work, came to my house, popped it in, and thought it might end up being really stupid. the first few jokes kind of fell flat, and then something happened,we looked at each other, burst out laughing, and then didn't stop laughing for the rest of the movie. It's just that kind of humor, the kind that gets me giggling no matter what (I can think of a scene in this movie and it makes me smile no matter where I am or what I'm doing).

This movie is about a guy named Shaun, a slacker in his 30s who doesn't have much ambition. He lives with two roommates and his girlfriend dumps him at the beginning of the movie because she doesn't think he plans to go anywhere in life (and he doesn't seem to care, either). He goes out with one of his roommates to get drunk the night of the break up, and in the morning, the world is suddenly ending in a zombie apocalypse. Soon, he's going around town gathering his friends and family and trying to seclude them all in a local bar, waiting for rescue. It's the same plot from any other zombie movie, but the twists and nudges to other classic zombie films are what make this one a treat for horror fans. The jokes in this movie aren't forced the way they are with one of the "Scary Movie"s or with something like "Shriek if You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th," it's not a spoof in that classic sense, it's just a movie where dialogue and situations are cast in a funny light, and that's something refreshing in this age of "Epic Movie" and "Date Movie" and "Spoof Movie 3001." I love returning to this movie every time I need a genuine laugh and a good time (and I can't hear Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" without thinking of this movie...that's a good thing). I haven't seen this movie in awhile, so it was the perfect choice to cheer me up this Halloween.

I Still Know what You Did Last Summer (movie #93)

Of all the slasher sequels I've seen, this one has some of the most ridiculous twists. Watching it, I think "wow, if these college students had known more about geography, this movie would never have happened." It's not that I expect everything in this movie to be totally realistic, but of all the slasher movies I've ever seen,I think this one takes itself so seriously that every silly thing that happens is more glaring as a result. The original "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was silly at a few points, but nowhere near the level of ridiculousness that this movie reaches. Nevertheless, this movie has a spooky island setting, and some cool kill scenes, so I can forgive anything dumb that happens along the way. Julie and her college roommate win a trip to a secluded island resort, but the killer from the original movie is up to his old habits (yeah,I thought he died, too, but you know these killer can never die in movies like this). Soon they are running and trying to survive,and then there's a twist at the end that makes everything about ten times more stupid. Poo on stupid ending twists. But yay for killers rampaging in secluded hotels.

Ghost Ship (movie #92)

This movie gets a lot of hate, and I don't really understand why (that seems to be a running theme with the movies I like...everyone else hates them :-p)

A crew salvage a ship where a bunch of people died years ago. They learn that the ship is haunted because all the people on the ship died terrible deaths and are pretty vengeful and angry. The crew eventually learns that the truth is even more complicated than they think, though,as treasure is buried with the ship and the vengeful ghosts might not be the only danger here.

The scene where the original ship guests are massacred is the best part of the movie. It's really icky and creepy. I also liked the mystery revealed at the end of the movie (though it's a little weird, it works for me) and there's plenty of gore and some cool surprises along the way. I think this movie is good fun.

Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (Movie #91)

This movie is so sad. I mean,I've loved it since I was a kid, but I see something new every time I watch it (that's one of the reasons I love it so much) and this time around it struck me how sad and tragic the character of Charlotte is.

Charlotte was a southern Belle when she was young, and her father doted on her, but he didn't approve of her boyfriend, so he gave a speech to the boyfriend and drove him away. The night he breaks up with Charlotte she screams at him and threatens to kill him. Later we see him sitting alone, mourning the lo9ss of his love, when someone comes into the room and chops off his hand and then his head. Later, people at Charlotte's coming out ball see her walk in with her pretty white dress covered in blood. everyone in town assumes she was the murderer. She assumes her father was the murderer,and out of love for him, she never really rigorously defends herself against these accusations (and she never tells anyone about her suspicions of her father). Since there's not much evidence one way or the other, she is never tried or convicted, but everyone in town assumes she is guilty and spreads this rumor, so she grows into an old woman in the plantation home with her father. She never marries again or moves out on her own, and she grows more and more crazy as the years go on. Fast forward to the present. The city is tearing down the old house to build a highway, and they want Charlotte to move out, but she refuses. She writes her beloved cousin Miriam for help,and Miriam obliges. Charlotte gets more and more crazy and her memories of her dead lover get more and more realistic until she thinks he's really come back form the dead to haunt her. What's really going on here? It's up to the audience to put the pieces together as the story unfolds.

Here's the deal. When I was a kid,I was obsessed with the re-issues of old Tales from the Crypt comics, nasty little horror comics that featured despicable people doing horrible things to each other and then getting what they deserve at the end. I think I initially loved this movie because it is so much like one of those Tales from the Crypt stories. I also love how everything that happens in a mystery. No one character knows the whole truth of what happened that night when Charlotte's lover got murdered (or so we think). Basically, the story has been built up over the years through gossip, and poor Charlotte has grown old in this house surrounded by people who hate her and vilify her for something she didn't do. She has fed their hate in a lot of ways by acting as crazy as they think she is (as the sheriff says in the beginning of the movie, Charlotte isn't really crazy, mostly just eccentric, but she acts crazy because that's what people expect of her). But a problem comes up and Charlotte doesn't know how to fix it. Her home is going to be torn down, and it's the only home she's ever known, and she doesn't know what to do. She calls her cousin to help her, and everyone says that her cousin is vengeful and evil, but at first her cousin acts nice. It's only as the movie goes on that we see this nice facade crack and we learn how truly vengeful cousin Miriam really is.

There's more to the story, but you should really see it for yourself. This is a movie that really deserves more recognition than it gets, I think. Creepy and evil and mean-spirited and fun. It's just what the doctor ordered for a Halloween horror romp.

X Files: I Want to Believe (movie #90)

Um...I wanted to like this movie. Even when everyone else in the world hated it, I still thought there was a chance I'd like it, so I watched it,. I hated it. I found it even worse this time around, as I was laughing most of the way through (and it's definitely not supposed to be funny) and...yeah.

The movie is about the disappearance of an FBI agent that lures ex agent Fox Mulder out of hiding. A Priest who's in exile because of his crimes against children is having visions that tell where the agent is, and more murders are discovered, and Mulder and Scully were in a relationship but they broke up because they're morons, and Scully is a doctor who is trying to save a patient that everyone else says is beyond help,and blah blah blah, and there are [people who speak German (I think it's German) throughout the movie, but there are no subtitles at the bottom of the screen to tell us what they're saying, and my head exploded, and Scully needs to have faith and believe, and Mulder needs to find the missing FBI agent, and my cat's breath smells like cat food, and is the movie over yet?

So yeah. It's not very good. Bleh.

One Missed Call (2008) (movie #89)

This movie is horrible. Absolutely horrible. I like the original, but this remake sucked balls. It's about a group of college students who start hearing a strange ringtone on their cellphones, one they've never heard before, and then (since they don't answer the peon...what if they did? What would happen then? We'll never know) they have a voicemail, and when they listen to it, they hear the sounds of their own deaths. Then they die. And there's a ghost killing people, a vengeful little ghost, and we don't know why (and in this movie, we don't care). One of the students investigates to find out what's going on, the world's dumbest cop helps her, blah blah blah, is it over yet?

Watch the original instead.

The Strangers (movie #88)

This movie is creepy. It's about a woman and a man staying in a secluded cabin for the night who are tormented by three strange people for no apparent reason. The "strangers" first stay outside the house, making noises and knocking things down, then the trouble escalates. This is one of those movies that got under my skin. How many times do you get the creepy feeling that someone is behind you, then turn around to see that no one is there? Well this movie posits the idea that someone really IS there, you just don't turn around fast enough to know it...

AAAAAA! Let's just say that this movie freaked me the hell out when I first saw it, and even though it didn't scare me this time around, I still appreciated it for the well-made little creepfest that it is.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (movie #87)

People say that the "producer's cut" of this movie is better, but for my money, the theatrical cut is just as good. The story goes something like this: The original cut of this movie relied very heavily on Donald Pleasance, and when he died, the studio wanted the movie reshot because he wouldn't be able to continue the series since he was dead. That original cut of the movie is still looming around the internet and among fans, and it's been dubbed the "producer's cut" of the movie. Because it's said to be so much better than the theatrical cut, I wanted to see it for years, but when I finally did, it...well, it kind of sucks. I mean, it's ok, but I LIKED the theatrical release (it's not perfect, no, but it's ok, and it's not as bad as people say it is) sop I was underwhelmed with the "producer's cut" of the movie, since I didn't think it lived up to the hype. It's good, but it's also bad in different ways than the original. I don't know. Like I said, I like the theatrical version.

The plot is kind of dumb, but for the sixth movie in a series, that's to be expected. Jamie Lloyd (Laurie's daughter who was kidnapped by a mysterious man dressed in black at the end of part 5) is pregnant (yeah,.she aged a lot in the time between the two movies...and ew, she had sex with her uncle...ew ew ew) and she gives birth in some kind of icky Satanic ritual, then manages to escape with the baby only to be killed by Michael who wants the baby back. But she hides the baby and she's lucky that the person who finds the baby is Tommy Doyle (the little boy from the original Halloween, all grown up) and he can protect the baby because he knows of Micheal's past. Meanwhile, there's a family living in the old Strode house who are about to discover that they're connected to Michael Myers in a way they never dreamed.

Ok, yeah, it's really dumb. But there are some really cool kill scenes, some cool chase scenes, and a monologue by a creepy old woman that makes the whole movie so much fun. Trust me, the Producer's Cut isn't much better.